Looking When We Should Be Looking Away

Why Do We Crave to Know More About Others’ Misfortunes?

The other day I was enduring the endless wait in solitary confinement at an Urgent Care Facility. Despite the nurse saying that the Doctor would be “right in,” I had been eyeing that shiny red Biohazard bucket since she’d shut the door on her way out. The bucket with its triangular arrow-shaped sign was the brightest thing in the room.  It could be empty, or it could be full. Maybe it contained body parts that had been chopped off by shrub trimmers, or foreskin, or crusted over scabs from a dog bite…or maybe it just contained soiled Q-Tips and bloody bandages from a fall on the cement. Either way, it was the fact that someone’s misfortune had contributed to its contents that consumed me.

This is the reason that drivel like reality shows, and soap operas and Jerry Springer can consistently bring in the bucks and the audience. Because people want to see others suffering more than they are. If Ashley slept with her mother’s boyfriend, and a mother-daughter catfight ensues, then for those few moments between commercials we can forget that we have problems of our own. And reveling in someone else’s problems, with its disconnection from our own reality, provides us with an escape if just for a few minutes.

I held back from peeking into the Biohazard bin, because someday, something of mine could be in there. And I would want dignity and respect to prevail over the torrid curiosity of others who would revel in my misfortune.

What your Children Learn from your Kind Acts

Your Children are Watching You

There’s something about learning by doing. After the January 12 earthquake in Haiti I learned more about my son than I had known about him in the first 12 years of his life. As he watched the people crying on CNN, being dug out of the rubble, bloody and homeless with no food or water, I saw my son’s eyes well up. He turned to me and he said, “We really need to help them! Look at those children; they have nothing to do.”  The thoughts of a child, concerned about the welfare of other children, because he had been in their place at one time.

And so with that, he conjured up the idea of sending yoyos down to the children so they had something to play with while Haiti was being rebuilt. We set about creating a website, yoyosforhaiti.com, and he wrote letters to all of the major yoyo manufacturers, who applauded him for his kindness and thoughtfulness towards the Haitian children. All but one contributed, as well as many individuals, and some went way out of their way to ensure that he met his goal of 500. It took a little while and some diligence on his part, but he followed through and he reached his goal. We took pictures along the way; we sent the press releases to CNN and the local news came to interview him. They asked him where his idea had originated, and his answer surprised even me. He said, “I know what it feels like to lose it all. I was homeless and I lost everything–even my cat–in Hurricane Katrina, and so I can understand how these children feel and I want them to feel better.”  My eyes welled up, as did those of the cameraman and the anchorwoman. For I thought that he had been too young during the Hurricane to equate it with a more adult-oriented sense of loss.

Here was true human compassion albeit in a small package; but it shows that kindness is still prevalent in our world and it gives me hope.  This is how we should want our children to grow up.  I was proud see my son display such love and empathy towards children he will never meet. I wanted to avoid taking any credit for myself. Yet when I look back at the little things that I’ve enjoyed giving to other people: those I don’t know; animals; children; the homeless–I  realized that he had been watching from the sidelines all along.  I was setting an example without even trying. And my mother had done the same thing before my own childish eyes, always giving as much she could despite having very little. She always had a smile for everyone she met, as do I to this day.

And so we pass the tendency for compassion down from generation to generation. We should be planning these lessons if they don’t come naturally to us, and we must ensure that those little acts of kindness are seen by our children and those around us. And when you see your child perform an act of kindness, make sure that praise and show appreciation. Because with the ripple effect, anybody who sees such acts is positively affected by them–whether they be a smile, a cold drink or a yoyo–and each observer will positively affect another in some small way.